Kyousuke Kamiya has spent almost half a year at the Purgatorium Remedial Academy, a special school dedicated for juvenile murderers–for a crime he didn’t commit. Together with his friends Maina, Renko, and Eiri, they must survive the cruel activities that the school has planned out for them.

Their task right now? Trying to get through a dangerous summer camp vacation, operated by their upperclassmen.

At its core, Psycome Volume 2 is more of the craziness that happened in the last volume except with a change in scenery and more characters. While this doesn’t seem very pleasing to hear just on that basis, it’s standard fare for romantic comedy. But for this particular series, it works in its favor as we get to see how Mizushiro continues to create these crazy situations.

Psycome wouldn’t be Psycome without its typical romantic comedy events. I found myself chuckling at some of scenes as Mizushiro creatively mixes together the genre’s typical tropes with Psycome’s craziness. Once Kyousuke and his friends arrive at the summer camp, they take part in the events listed in the itinerary. A couple of examples can range from disastrous attempts at trying to create curry (that may or not be lethal), a campfire show featuring a play about village-burning, a punishment game full of torture, and even a killer pillow fight. Unfortunately, Psycome still contains a significant amount boob jokes featuring our two love rivals, Renko and Eiri.

The heroine featured in this volume is the upper-classman Saki Shimaya, the “Murder Princess” as some people nickname her. She’s a classic example of the ojou-sama character trope (high class status, proper manner, blonde ringlets), but Purgatorium Remedial Academy has molded her from her serial murder activities. For a majority of the novel, Shimaya often clashes with our female cast; this conflict, coming from Shimaya’s perspective could be considered a very minor case of bullying, which when can be understood by her actions later on. Her true character also comes to fruition close to the end which is synonymous to when Psycome reveals more twists about the Academy.

Our main characters are progressed further in this arc, although one more than the other two. We are given more details regarding Maina’s specific condition and how she has been severely affected by it. Her case is an interesting one, simply because of how unbelievable it sounds, and that puts her in direct conflict with the lead heroine of this volume. It also continues to prove in the long run that she really doesn’t fit in with the academy’s goals to turning students into murderers.

Eiri and Renko gets the shorter ends of the stick for this volume. Eiri is our token tsundere for this series but now she’s slowly becoming more compassionate as she starts understands her own attitude problem and attempts to fix it. Meanwhile, Renko doesn’t show any noteworthy until the very end as Kyousuke tries to calm down and reassure her. Both Eiri and Renko only get a short section to themselves which is saddening because there’s a lot of potential material with them (Eiri is very underused) and as long as Mizushiro delays it, the cast and the series won’t progress further.

The illustrations are structured similarly to the previous volume. The jail profiles are updated with new characters featuring our main heroine and Renko’s classmates. There is also a picture of a foggy bath scene between Kyousuke and Renko for those interested or those who want to avoid it. Also, the last illustration adds to the tone of the cliffhanger as the series shows our presumably next heroine.

Psycome remains firmly rooted in its rom-com territory with unique characteristics. The novel leaves off at very big cliffhanger to keep your interest. The series definitely has lot more potential and I look forward to further development to our characters and the story.